The Aotearoa New Zealand Curriculum Te Whāriki as a Basis for Developing Dispositions of Inclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-195
Author(s):  
Michael Gaffney ◽  
Kate McAnelly
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Initial Teacher Education ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Family Perspectives ◽  
Early Childhood Settings ◽  
Te Whāriki

Over the last 20 years Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, has required and supported inclusive approaches to the active participation of disabled children and their families in everyday early childhood settings. The revised Te Whāriki, released in 2017, further places an onus of responsibility on teachers to resist inequity and exclusion experienced by disabled children through its focus on nurturing respectful, responsive relationships with families and honoring the knowledge parents bring with them as experts on their children. This chapter explores how Te Whāriki and initial teacher education (ITE) programs in Aotearoa New Zealand can act on each other to produce student teacher practice that is inclusive of family perspectives. Te Whāriki is a bicultural curriculum and recognizes the Crown's earlier commitment to the indigenous people of New Zealand. This also acknowledges the role of families in early childhood settings as equal partners in establishing aspirations for their children's learning.

The Aotearoa New Zealand Curriculum Te Whāriki as a Basis for Developing Dispositions of Inclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 1103-1117
Author(s):  
Michael Gaffney ◽  
Kate McAnelly
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Initial Teacher Education ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Family Perspectives ◽  
Early Childhood Settings ◽  
Te Whāriki

Over the last 20 years Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, has required and supported inclusive approaches to the active participation of disabled children and their families in everyday early childhood settings. The revised Te Whāriki, released in 2017, further places an onus of responsibility on teachers to resist inequity and exclusion experienced by disabled children through its focus on nurturing respectful, responsive relationships with families and honoring the knowledge parents bring with them as experts on their children. This chapter explores how Te Whāriki and initial teacher education (ITE) programs in Aotearoa New Zealand can act on each other to produce student teacher practice that is inclusive of family perspectives. Te Whāriki is a bicultural curriculum and recognizes the Crown's earlier commitment to the indigenous people of New Zealand. This also acknowledges the role of families in early childhood settings as equal partners in establishing aspirations for their children's learning.

Children’s ‘working theories’ as curriculum outcomes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Peters ◽  
Keryn Davis ◽  
Ruta McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Adult Child ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Complex Thinking ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
Early Childhood Settings ◽  
Te Whāriki ◽  
Sense Of Wonder

This chapter explores how children make sense of their world through the development and refinement of ‘working theories’. Working theories are a key item for young learners, and are emphasized in the New Zealand early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki. Children’s working theories develop in environments where they have opportunities to engage in complex thinking with others, observe, listen, participate, and discuss, within the context of topics and activities. It is through interactions and activities that children begin to own the ideas and beliefs of their culture and begin to make sense of their worlds. However, fostering this learning in early childhood settings is not always easy, and requires skilled adults who can respond appropriately. We explore and discuss the nature of children’s working theories and ways in which adult–child interactions can enhance or inhibit a sense of wonder and curiosity.

One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum

2020 ◽  
pp. 147821032097312
Author(s):  
Fiona Westbrook ◽  
Jayne White
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
National Government ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Te Whāriki

Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Māori after years of a right-wing government. With the ‘refresh’ of New Zealand’s national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki under the Fifth National Government we sought to investigate the location of these discourses in Te Whāriki. Borrowing from Tolkien this paper draws on the metaphor of a ruling, in this case neoliberal, discourse as ‘one ring to rule them all’. We investigate the governmentality of the Fifth National Government through their Four Year Plan 2016–2020 and its permeation of the revised curriculum. Seeking to better understand the location and dominance of neoliberalism within the updated Te Whāriki, the paper analyses both the 1996 curriculum and the 2017 revision for socialist, neoliberal and Te Ao Māori discourses, and their status within the document. A post-structuralist conceptual framework is employed for this study, bringing to bear Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva in conversation. Analysis across both Te Whāriki and the Four Year Plan found that while neoliberalism was certainly a pervasive discourse, it was, in fact, accompanied by discourses of socialism, neoliberalism and Te Ao Māori. The paper concludes by suggesting that, while neoliberalism may appear to dominate texts, there are complex interanimations between a number of discourses. This multitude potentially ameliorates any one discourse’s domination or, conversely, compromises others. With these findings come important implications concerning the pervasive discourse of neoliberalism and its shaping potential. However, there are also concerns for a new form of colonisation within early childhood curriculum and policy reform.

scholarly journals Kei hea te Ora? The whereabouts of the health of children in the early childhood curriculum of Aotearoa New Zealand

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Andrew Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Competing Values ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Te Whāriki

AbstractThe policies and practices of early childhood teaching in Aotearoa New Zealand have been an ongoing site of political, economic, social and cultural contestation. Competing values and beliefs regarding experiences of both the child and the teacher have been central to the contesting. Helen May (2001, 2009) tracks these tensions through the waxing and waning of particular landscapes or paradigms, each of which can be seen to have contributed to the growth of the early childhood sector, its purpose, operations, manifestations, and its arguably tenuous cohesion as an educational sector. This paper provides a brief overview of the various paradigms, their purposes, and their spheres of influence (recognising that other papers in this special issue will contribute to a very detailed picture of early childhood education in Aotearoa) before analysing the discourses of child health in relation to the early childhood curriculum. Health is woven into the strands and principles of Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education [MoE], 1996). Yet, this paper questions whether teachers and student teachers are attuned to what it means to have health as a key part of the curriculum, and explores whether health is a marginal consideration in the curriculum. The paper engages Foucault’s work, exploring tensions between pedagogical and medical disciplines in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood teaching. The idea of holism is then discussed as an approach to early childhood education curriculum discussions with reference to the participatory approaches to the development of Te Whāriki.

Shifts in policy and practice in early childhood curriculum priorities in Aotearoa-New Zealand: Entanglements of possibility and risk

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 739-756
Author(s):  
Maggie Haggerty ◽  
Judith Loveridge ◽  
Sophie Alcock
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Curriculum Policy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
National Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
National Education Policy ◽  
Recent Policy

Recent policy developments in the early childhood (EC) care and education sector in Aotearoa-New Zealand have seen a shift in focus from children and play to learners and learning. While few would argue against learning as priority this article raises pressing questions about the ‘intended’ and ‘(un)intended’ consequences of this turn. We analyse national education policy reforms that have served to promote the construction of child-as-learner-subject, alongside moves internationally toward the learnerfication of EC services (Biesta, 2010). As a particular focus, we examine the legacy EC curriculum policy has drawn on from indigenous Māori discourses, as a complex entanglement of both possibility and risk. We focus also on how, in this policy context, an intermix of ‘old’ and ‘new’ curriculum priorities was playing out in one EC setting and how teachers sought to navigate the complex entanglement this effected in practice. On the basis of our analyses, we argue that the problem is not with learning as priority, but with the (school-referenced) narrowing of curriculum, the prioritising of homogenised predetermined outcomes and the ways in which children (parents and teachers) are being positioned in these particular constructions of learners and learning.

scholarly journals Early childhood care and education in the cultural context of aotearoa (New Zealand)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
Narrative Assessment ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Care ◽  
Childhood Care ◽  
Te Whāriki

© 2018 Taylor and Francis. Early childhood care and education in Aotearoa (New Zealand) has been celebrated through the international interest in the innovative sociocultural curriculum, Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1996). This document is now 20 years old, and is at the time of writing being updated by the New Zealand Ministry of Education. 1 In this chapter, a brief overview of the historical and cultural contexts of early childhood care and education leads into a discussion of some key cultural constructs and values that are recognised in Te Whāriki; in particular, those of the Indigenous people, the Māori. Discussion of the narrative assessment models that were developed to support the implementation of Te Whāriki is followed by an outline of implications for teacher education. The chapter ends with some reflections on aspirations for the future of early childhood care and education in Aotearoa.

scholarly journals [email protected]: Mapping the Landscape of the “Century of the Child”

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen May
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Family ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Emergence Of Institutions

The “Century of the Child” was so named in 1900 by the Swedish writer Ellen Key. In its concluding year, this chapter sketches some maps of childhood in “Aotearoa New Zealand” in terms of: changes in how our society has viewed “children before five”; the emergence of institutions outside of the family to care and educate the “before fives”; different constructions of “before five” childhood and child institutions for Maori and Pakeha; the present context of early childhood services sited amidst new economic and political discourses that are transforming the role of the state.

The Bicultural Imperative within the New Zealand Draft Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education, ‘Te Whariki’

1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Primary Site ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Curriculum Guidelines ◽  
Te Whāriki

The New Zealand Draft Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education, ‘Te Whariki’, introduced in 1993, are discussed in relation to the historical and cultural contexts which underlie their development, and aspects of the bicultural focus of the document are highlighted. The document addresses the aspirations of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, for their language and culture to be protected and sustained. Early childhood is the primary site for the transmission of language and culture, and this places the onus on all early childhood educators in New Zealand to address these issues in an integrated way within the early childhood curriculum.

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